RUNNING COULD HURT YOUR HEART: STUDY

Nothings perfectly safe, right? If you’re a runner, you know you can screw up your knees (it’s not as bad as you think though), twist an ankle, or catch pneumonia. But one thing you never considered is that it running might be bad for your heart.

A study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology says it is if you run marathons. Don’t take this wrong. Nobody’s saying you should sit around and veg. In fact, if you use a little common sense, you’re probably fine. What the authors(lead author: Eric Larose, , Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec) figured out is that running very long distances (marathons) causes inflammation, changes in heart muscle, and reduced blood flow – especially in runners who weren’t in good condition. The changes seem to just be temporary. The runners’ hearts got better after some rest. But it’s a little scary, isn’t it?

Is there enough here to scare you away from an exercise that’s probably good for you? There have been well publicized cases (very rare) of top runners suffering a heart attack in a race. Still, I’m thinking that when this gets all figured out, the advice will be to use common sense. If you have some reason to worry about your heart, don’t be an idiot. And don’t run marathons without proper training and preparation and the right running shoes and such.

This is a good study. But more work needs to be done to understand if it changes anything.